


That's a Big Fish

by Indigomountain



Category: Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Hydra (Marvel), Hydra scientists - Freeform, Kidnapped Tony Stark, M/M, Minor panic attach, Morse Code, Pre-Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Unethical Experimentation, but not graphic, merman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:22:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22689184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Indigomountain/pseuds/Indigomountain
Summary: Tony gets captured by Hydra. He isn't their only prisoner.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 26





	1. Chapter 1

This was less than ideal. In fact, this was the opposite of ideal. It was bad. Very _very_ bad as a matter of fact. The suit was completely unresponsive. He had no comms, no telemetry, he wasn't even sure if the team knew he was down. He was pretty sure it was some kind of EMP blast but without any of his systems he wouldn’t be able to know for sure. 

He fell like a rock. 

The only good news so far was that he hadn’t been going at his usual break neck speed two hundred feet in the air and the reassuring blue glow which he could just make out that said his reactor was unaffected by whatever had taken his suit out. 

The middle of a fight was the worst place to be laying prostrate and Tony really wished there was something he could do about that but without Jarvis or someone to manually release the catches on the suit he was stuck in his own little metal coffin. The sky was a beautiful blue today at least, considering he couldn’t even turn his head to look away from the soft blue and gentle Cirrocumulus clouds floating along. It could be worse, it could be pouring rain, and that rain could leak through the helmet and he could drown. He was freaking out a little, forget that there wasn’t a storm cloud in the sky and the helmet was air tight with its own air filtration system. 

Tony was so focused on not having a panic attack that he almost didn’t notice when someone approached him. For half a second, he thought it was Barnes’ large frame creeping up in his periphery to check up on him; but the silhouette and gait were unfamiliar. See, it could always be worse. 

He didn’t know specifics like a name and he didn’t recognize the face at all, but with the insignia on his arm Tony could hazard a pretty good guess. Whoever this was they worked for Hydra and that was bad on a normal day, but right now with his suit completely out of commission he was helpless; and judging from the smirk on the Hydra goon’s face, Tony wasn’t the only one who knew it. 

They hadn’t been fighting Hydra, hadn’t heard anything from them in months no matter how hard they looked. The organization had probably been planning this for weeks or maybe even the months since they’d lost the scent. The team wouldn’t jump straight to Hydra when they figured out Tony was missing and those extra hours would be enough to get him pretty much anywhere. 

He hated being abducted by terrorist organizations, he always had to save himself. 

The wall of Hydra muscle made to grab Tony and toss him over his shoulder, for a brief moment he hoped that the guy would realize Iron Man weighed five hundred plus pounds with its pilot and give up; but no such luck, over the shoulder Tony went like a sack of potatoes, this was definitely an enhanced. They strolled right out of the area of destruction as the Avengers fought on, unaware that Tony was currently being moved to a secondary location. He wished there was something, literally anything, he could do to get out of this but the suit was pretty much impossible for him to maneuver in without the systems doing the heavy lifting. He would need to work on an interior latch mechanism if he lived through this. 

He was tossed unceremoniously into the back of a vehicle. He couldn’t actually see what kind, facing the Hydra lackey’s back and all that, but he was going to assume it was an unmarked white windowless panel van; just for arguments sake it was very likely. He heard Mr. Goon get in the front seat and they were leaving the primary location. If comedians had taught him anything he was definitely going to die. 

They drove out of the city; he could hear the sound of a tunnel and if he was right and they were moving south then this was the Lincoln tunnel which meant this was definitely Jersey. Tony didn’t want to die in _Jersey._

It had to have been a good three hours of driving, he had made a few attempts to unlatch the suit but he just couldn’t get the gauntlet into the finger holds; somehow, he hadn’t anticipated this scenario. The external mechanisms were in case he was injured and unconscious thus unable to give the verbal command. He obviously needed to sit down with Romanoff and Barnes, their two resident doom and glooms, and have a brainstorm of horror scenarios and what could help in each of them. 

When the van stopped the Hydra minion got out and came around for him, so much for hoping he would be forgotten about and left to scrabble at his suit some more. But, let's be real, if he couldn’t get it open in three hours it just wasn’t happening. 

From what he could see the Hydra base looked exactly as he had expected… but then again all he could see was the back of his abductor so it wasn’t a great view for scoping the place out. He was sure it contained at least one Hydra Goon though. 

They wound through hallways before Tony was finally set down, the suit was balanced on its feet while Tall Dark and Nefarious pulled the manual releases that he had been trying so hard to get to. It seemed like much less of a victory right now. The suit opened and Tony was yanked out of it by a hand around the collar of the under suit he wore and unceremoniously dumped into a cell. The door was locked with little fanfare, no gloating or monologuing to let Tony know exactly how Hydra was going to take over the world. 

“Not a scratch on that, do you hear me Igor!” He shouted after the henchman who ignored him completely. He honestly felt rather insulted; his captor hadn’t even bothered to search him. Who knows what sort of fun things he could have been carrying with him… in this skin tight under suit... Oh. He would have to start carrying interesting things sewn into his flight suit, it was near the top of his ‘things I will do when I escape my captors this time’ list. Right under not getting abducted again. 

The cell was completely bare... well it was really more of a cage than anything else if you wanted to argue about it, but really who even knew what constituted a cage anymore? It was in a larger room with several more cages, none of which were occupied and a large rectangular tank of murky water. He tried his hardest to reach anything that might be even slightly helpful but Hydra wasn’t stupid enough to leave him anything useful, a full ten feet around his cage was cleared of anything that wasn’t nailed down. 

Tony spent almost twenty minutes trying to find any way to escape but with no recourses he was stuck here. No one had come to check on him or anything, he was feeling rather neglected. No demands had been made yet and for all he knew they already had what they wanted, the suit, which would indeed be bad for him; it would mean he was expendable. They were probably too smart to ask him to build them anything, learning from the mistakes of others and all that. 

“Fuck!” Tony shouted in frustration. He slammed a hand into the bars of his cage, it stung but it was cathartic too so he did it again. He was in some deep shit. The team had probably realized he was missing no more than two or three hours ago, but if Hydra had taken the time to figure out how to disable his suit, they could definitely figure out how to not be caught on cctv during their getaway; that meant the team had no leads to work from. It would take forever for them to find him. A cynical part of him whispered they may not find him at all, he could die here and it might be years before anyone ever figures out what even happened to Tony Stark. 

Movement caught his attention out of the corner of his eye and Tony was on red alert again, pulling himself out of his swirling thoughts. He started gearing up for an interrogation or whatever Hydra might have planned for him but no one was there when he looked. It took him a moment to realize that what he'd seen was the murky water in the glass tank churning. 

There was a body in the water. 

No, there was a… being in the water, alive and maybe not well (this was a Hydra facility after all) but definitely not dead. The poor thing was almost squished in the tank, probably not enough room to extend his elbows fully let alone stretch out his arms. He must have done some serious contortions to turn himself around to look at Tony. 

The guy had just about given Tony a heart attack, appearing out of the cloudy water like he had, but it was somehow comforting to know that he wasn’t here all alone. 

“Hey there, I’m Tony. Can you hear me?” Maybe it was strange to assume that whatever he was spoke English, but he looked like a man… well it was some really dirty water but he looked humanoid and with the number of different beings he’d met that spoke English, Tony was willing to give it a shot. If he was wrong then the only people who would know would be himself and Hydra and he doubted they cared whether he made small talk with whatever they were keeping in that tank. 

He was proven right in his hypothesis though with a vigorous head nod, his new friend had moved as close as he could and Tony could make out blond hair, a strong jaw line, and wide shoulders now that he was practically squished against the glass. There were also four lines going down either side of his neck, Tony was guessing they were gills because of the tank but then again it was just as likely scars from some form of torture Hydra had put the man through. 

“That’s great! Listen, I don’t know how, but I'm going to get out of here. I’ll get you out too. Can you get the lid off your tank?” He got a stream of bubbles in reply; the man banged his fist against the lid just to demonstrate that it was on tight. 

“That’s alright. We’ll just have to bide our time. I happen to great at escaping, MacGyver's got nothing on me,” He couldn’t tell if the man in the tank believed him or not but it was good to talk to someone, even if they only replied in bubbles. “Do you mind if I keep talking? I do some of my best thinking when I ramble.” 

His new friend blew some more bubbles and settled to the bottom of his tank, his chin resting on one hand while he watched Tony avidly. Tony could sympathize, this seemed like a really boring room if there was nobody else in it to entertain you. 

After a few minutes of pointless chatter to fill the silence Tony noticed that his new friend was tapping against the bottom of his tank, Tony would say aimlessly but there was definitely a pattern there. Even more exciting than that it was a pattern that Tony already knew, good old Morse code! 

_N_ _ever stop talking_ _._ He tapped out while listening politely to Tony’s rambling, Tony himself wasn’t paying one whit of attention to his own words instead he was listening to his cleaver new friend tap tap tap. 

“If you knew who I was you would know that won’t be a problem,” Tony was self-aware enough to admit that. He could talk for days and days and never run out of things to say; it was a character flaw, his mouth. 

_You know Morse._ The man sat up in his tank and was paying Tony a great deal of attention now, a look of hope in his eyes. _I am_ _Steve._

“It’s nice to meet you Steve, although I wish it were under more pleasant circumstances. So, what brings a guy like you to a place like this?” Tony cocked his hip to the side in a parody of seduction and paired it with his cockiest smile. 

_Charming_ Steve gave him a look so flat that Tony could feel the sarcasm. _I’m their science experiment._ He saw movement over Steve's shoulder and it took him a moment to register what he was seeing; his first thought was ‘that’s a big fish’, followed by ‘there can’t be enough room for a fish that size and Steve in that tank’, before he finally found his way to ‘Steve is a merman’. He wasn’t sure if Steve had started out that was and he wasn’t sure they were close enough for him to ask that question yet. Either way he had a lot of questions and none of them mattered right now, they would sort out that kind of detail later, preferably from the swimming pool at the tower. 

“We will get out of here,” Tony had to keep reminding himself that, it was too easy to fall into a spiral of panic. 

_B_ _een here for years. Good luck though._ Ok so Steve wasn’t convinced but then again if he had been here for years then he had no idea that Tony had escape from a terrorist group with the most panache of anyone ever. Obviously, Hydra was a different creature entirely but Tony still had pretty high hopes for getting out of here alive. It was really a matter of how long it would take him, he was hoping to shave a few months off his time. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Steve begin their escape.

There was the sound of water sloshing – oh god it’s time for another round of waterboarding – Tony almost spiraled into a panic attack right out of a dead sleep until he realized the sounds were coming from Steve’s tank.

Two men were attempting to lift Steve from his tank and onto a gurney but Steve was putting up one hell of a struggle. There was a lot of grunting from the hydra agents and a surprising amount of hissing from Steve. He watched the fishman jackknife which put him over the shoulder of the man in front of him. 

“You stupid fucking fish, you can breathe just fine so shut up!” This was from the man behind Steve who pulled out what looked like a cattle prod and gave him a good jolt in the meat of his ass which caused both him and the guy holding him up to cry out. Can anybody say duh?

“You stupid fucker! I’m holding him, were you trying to electrocute me? Because it fucking worked!” The two men were ramping up to a full-on argument which was probably exactly what Steve was hoping for as he unclipped the keys off the man holding him up as smoothly as any pickpocket or spy. He then looked up to meet Tony’s eye; they didn’t need any words, a nod of the head showed that Tony understood the simple plan they were about to enact. 

“It’s not like I hit you with it. Quit being a pussy about it.” The idiot said. 

“That’s not how electricity works you  fuck knuckle !” And honestly Tony had to agree, where did Hydra get this goon? They must have been scraping the bottom of the barrel if this was their usual level of henchman. 

In a clean arc Steve threw the keys right between the bars of Tony’s cell. There was only the lightest jingle as Tony caught them, Thing One and Thing Two were too distracted to notice it anyway. They were in fact so absorbed in their argument that neither noticed Tony opening his cage and coming up on them from an angle to grab the cattle prod out of Thing Two’s loosened grip and press it to his ribs as hard as he could. 

The guy cried out but they were past worrying about that now; they had already made quite a bit of noise, if anyone were going to come they would have by now. The man holding Steve made off decidedly worse, those sharp teeth that Tony could now see had taken a rather large chunk out of his neck. He went down hard with a gasping gurgle, taking Steve with him. Had he not just taken a rather sizable chunk out of a man’s throat Tony would probably have tried to catch Steve. But things being as they were... 

It did make him feel a little better when the hunk of flesh was spit out instead of swallowed. 

“Fuck that hurt-” Steve wheezed rubbing at where the prod had made contact. Tony jumped a little not expecting the guy to be able to speak for some reason, they could communicate just fine but for some reason he didn’t picture him talking. 

It looked like a struggle but Steve rolled onto his back and stared blankly at the ceiling for a minute, panting from the exertion and probably the pain he was feeling in his entire body. Tony took his first good look; Steve really was beautiful even with his blond hair stuck to his head with water and blood dripping down his chin. He turned his head and spit out another mouth full of blood, which was charming (not). The tail was much longer than Tony had originally guessed, at least four and a half feet on its own. It looked dull, either from a piss poor diet of  whatever Hydra felt like feeding him or the fact that his tank was filthy or both. He couldn't decide on a color though, it was maybe blue maybe grey.

“Hate to rush you but we really should go...” Tony crouched next to the second man and began divesting him of his clothes, he was delighted to find a gun holstered at the man’s back. He was lucky enough to not have a bulky body builder type so the clothes fit close enough, the belt needed to be cinched tight to keep the pants on but it was good enough. 

“Just give me five minutes to get my legs under me.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Tony was distracted by the radio, it wasn’t great but he might be able to do something with it if he could find some tools. That was a last resort, with any luck they would find his suit and a hard reset would mean they were back in business. He would fly them out of here and drop  Steve off at the closest ocean or whatever. 

He was dragging the now boxer clad unconscious Hydra goon into his cell when someone came up behind him. Without really thinking about it his hand shot out to strike at his assailant's breast bone. With what looked like very little effort Steve caught his hand and held it away from him. 

Steve was standing in front of him. 

Standing on legs. 

That were  scaleless ... and very naked. 

Tony wasn’t ashamed to admit when he was confused – and maybe a little turned on but who wouldn’t be when a Greek  Adonis was suddenly in front of you with his junk just airing out?

“Sorry  bout that, I didn’t mean to startle you,” That was definitely something Steve could have mentioned. The fact that he could turn his tail into a pair of legs. Not that Tony was complaining, it would make their escape easier by far. He had been imagining himself pushing Steve on the gurney Hydra had so helpfully provided while preying the merman could shoot a gun. He was also imaging Steve pushing him onto the gurney and showing him how well he could use his- he was getting distracted. They had to focus, he could save his lascivious thoughts for later and maybe if he was very lucky, he would get to act on them. 

“Uh... Clothes. You should  pants ,” He began taking the pants of the man Steve had so helpfully brought over. He had to get his head back in the game. Now was not the time to be thinking about getting it on with an undercover merman. 

He heard Steve sigh above him, when he looked up (eyes very firmly above the belt, metaphorically) the man's arms were crossed and he was... well he was pouting, there was no other word for it, “I hate pants. They're so restricting.”

“Well that’s tough, because pants are required right now.” Tony wouldn’t be able to do much of anything if he had to try doing it while staring at miles of pale perfect skin - he was only mortal. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sudden burst of inspiration! I (as usual) only have a vague idea of where I am going (with my fic and with life in general) so hold on for sharp turns. Steve has legs now! Surprise! What will they do next? I mean probably escape... but after that who knows.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm planning on this being a series but don't expect any kind of fast updates because that's just never going to happen. There were a lot of unanswered questions and I do have answers for them. Has Steve always been a merman or is he a victim of sick hydra scientists? how is Tony going to escape? is the team close to finding him for a daring rescue? how does Bucky play into this? is the hydra goon really named Igor?


End file.
